I've been mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for over 6 months in that thing it's a plug-and-play Bitcoin crypto mining container today I want to run through the highs the lows and just my whole experience that I've had mining with this thing was it worth it would I do it again how much does it cost where do you get it how many miners can I run through it and have I had any problems spoiler yes and what are they now have I either fixed them or tried to fix them my name is Vos bam it's on
the shirt you're on the Vos going YouTube channel let's dig into it so to start with a brief introduction also check out this article I wrote this morning where I basically have a written review of this digital shovel mini pod m300 this is the video review but hey why not read along and follow your your boy on medium I say it's a plug-and-play Bitcoin mining container and largely it is but it's not a customized shipping container it's a custombuilt metal building these are built at the digital shovel Factory which is led by Scott Johnson in
Canada last year I approached Scott and I was like hey Scott finally building out my mining Farm what if we reviewed the m300 he said sure came down and dropped one off the initial impressions are wow so cool right I mean it's Unique looking it's fun it's big but actually pretty Compact and it just makes a statement we have these three intake hoods on the front and there's six filters in each of them they're 24x 24x 4 and if you're wondering if you just jump on Amazon to buy The Replacements that's going to cost you
a cool 330 on the other side we have exhaust fans we have four 15,000 CFM exhaust fans here pulling some serious air I've got my power rack over here which I'll dive into in a second you may notice one of those is off unfortunately my fan motor just went bad to enter the shovel you're going to need the code as well as the key and look at that clever icon I put on that thing come on when you open the pod you're met with a lot of noise and immediate air flow we can see the
air filters over here we just talked about they're secured by these little metal pieces you take that off this comes up you can replace those filters one of the really cool things about this pod design is going to be the custom shelves that they buil they build those in-house it's rolled metal and it allows you to throw all these miners on top of it inside the digital shovel there's two smart pdus and they were they allow for uh remote rebooting they monitor power and they perform a lot of functions they can even cycle the fans
so you're not always running the fans the same fan all the time or if it gets hotter it can turn an additional fan on to get closer to the either recommended or your target temperature ultimately it's pretty simple though right we have a cold side we have a hot side air is flowing through we plug miners in they run they get cooled with this and they're in a secure facility right there and it's not watertight but cuz some water does get in there but it just ends up on the floor and it has not negatively
impacted any miners yet one of the things I noticed is I need to drill out the drain holes because they either have mud kicked up in them or they uh just had some pain in them uh from the factory just kind of you know drifting the hole or whatever my power situation is pretty simple I've got a 400 amp service right here and it feeds right into the building and I'm running 200 amps to each side this is a 208 volt prototype version that digital shovel made and because it's 208 basically you can rig it
up with three phase and I'm running a hot hot and a neutral or basically I can operated at 2/3 capacity to put that that's kind of the simple way to put it watch the vcoin electricity guide if you're new to electricity and Mining and stuff like that if that confuses you but you want to do this consult a electrician it's pretty simple and you can see when we take the panel off we've got these three lines running into the pdu and that's the hot hot neutral that basically gives us 240 voltage single phase and 2/3
capacity that's why when you look at the pdu the bottom third on each of them cannot be used one of the issues with the singlephase aspect of this is going to be the fact uh that this needed unique software and that was never written uh for the Prototype uh my fans don't cycle to reduce wear uh they don't open based on temperature and it's not very easy to configure a way to basically remote into this and remotely power cycle The Miner so so in my situation the smart pdu ultimately ended up as a dumb pdu
not the biggest deal but it was a little frustrating but this is not the normal experience if you have the normal 415 voltage version uh then you have all those features Scott has also been developing a new pdu which is why this prototype pdu was I guess basically abandoned uh it's a pdu that can do single phase as well as 3phase electricity so he's going to have one pdu across his lineup which you know from a business owner point of view uh you know that's that's very simple and makes a lot of sense I had
another issue with my prototype pdu basically one of the terminals that was not not something we touched with the install was loose so the loose connection was allowing the power to ramp up and it would trip the 350 amp breaker and it would trip that before it would ever trip my 200 amp breaker on the main panel but I believe this caused damage and partially melted my 200 amp main breaker eventually we figured this out with troubleshooting uh we tighten that down and that pdu has been running great for a couple months now we replaced
the 200 amp main breaker on the service panel and everything has been good that was a very frustrating issue that I dealt with that was hard to troubleshoot and when I contacted digital shovel about it it was hard for them to deal with it because this isn't a pdu they have any more of they are working on a new different version and they have their existing old version but there was nothing that could be subbed for me in this scenario right around that same time one of the switches failed in here there's two Network switches
there's Cisco switches and a piece one failed it just wasn't working so in my immediate frustration then I went ahead and just subbed it out with an alternative uh cuz BMA came out help me it was helping me troubleshoot the podt in general and they helped me find and fix the loose terminal and we swapped the switch at that same time and again you may Wonder did you contact digital shovel what happened on that front later on it was discussed if I would have asked that he would have set me a replacement but the bottom
line is when it comes to a mining Farm downtime is killer downtime is the kiss of death uh so I can't have my miners down because of a bad pdu or a bad switch so I got to get out here I got to get my hands dirty and I got to get this stuff fixed and situated because I've been working on building out the vcoin mining Farm we have a dedicated building right here behind me uh for hard drive Mining and then the gray shed behind me which was originally planned to be the next air
cooled mining shed uh when I got the Pod I so I got this in December of 2022 and so I halted my plans to make this an air cooled facility uh just because I I had that and I was focused on getting the Pod going and filled up and I'm like well why am I let me just change gears and and and you know fix it on that and I'll come back to the mining shed well now long story short this just became the immersion mining shed so that's cool and fun um and I'm focusing
on liquid mining in that building and by separating all these it gives me full control of what I'm doing and and so forth without going on a huge ran or tangent so you know that's a Bare Bones uh you know Amish build shed 2x6 construction um it's great for liquid cool binding it's simple it's purpose built it's functional uh the the green shed the hard drive shed actually has a mini split on it uh and so that is re in reality a mini uh data center so I'm cooling that but it's a waste of money
to cool Asic miners when you can just use air and and have and run fans for much more economical cooling so it's basically either go immersion Mining and and liquid mine with Bitcoin miners or do air cool mining like the Pod has with the four fans on the back uh they move about 1,500 CFM each and they consume about 3,000 watts in total unfortunately one of those fan motors just went bad checked the fuse did some quick TR troubleshooting contact the digital shovel they said they're going to send a replacement or an upgrade uh so
you know we'll see the bottom line is I'm in Virginia we're entering the cooler months here so this is kind of fine I mean it's I don't need all four fans right now it was good timing for an issue in a way uh and I I just you know I I joked in the article that I wrote I'm just kind of like an unlucky guy with some things like this uh but you know being a prototype unit I don't want to be as super critical but all I have with this is my you know real
experience and you know for reference depending on when you buy this the market conditions the volume at which you buy um and any kind of promotions like you we have a link with them and you get a discount for using our link on top of anything else they have going on but this is roughly a $20,000 structure and by the time you DIY something yeah like you could DIY something similar cheaper but there's a huge value factor for some of the components that are used here all metal construction the fact that it's Plug and Play
I mean you can order 10 of these and they have a door on the side that's like a blank so we have an actual metal door right here and then they have a blank door on the other side and so in my situation I just put the service panel here and we punch through the blank and above it uh but right here you just stack another one and another one and another one and you could just deploy a row of 10 of these and depending on your model you can deploy a bunch of miners for
me I can deploy about 22 full sizee current generation Asic mining rigs that is an s19 or something similar uh these are miners that are expected to consume around 3,000 Watts I can push a little bit over that but I like to dummy proof it simply put I can run 22 miners in there and I have not done the wire management I mean it looks terrible everybody laughs at me and makes fun of me whatever I I get that uh but I I've been troubleshooting this thing I've been changing around my mining Hardware I mean
so many things have been changing and uh so at this point I'm just going to go ahead and dedicate 22 slots for 22 miners run the power cables cuz there's Cable Management trays on on the front of the shelves if you look closely and uh run the ethernet cables in a nice and tidy way and this thing is going to look good and I'm just going to leave it that way forever I know these power cables work I know that this is my capacity I know that these ethernet cables work done and I'm just going
to let it rip I really cannot understate how excited I am for them to release a dedicated singlephase model that will help so many more smaller and Medi medium scale miners get into this especially you know no matter what your electrical situation you can deploy this if you want to do so so that's really cool to hear uh that they're working on that supposed to be soon they showed their nanopod at the mining disrupt uh conference this year and the nanopod is basically half the size and capacity essentially of this so this I've deployed 400
amps on single phase that thing can do 200 amps you know either on single phase or three-phase electricity or simply put it can run about 12 miners in there digital shovel is also reportedly working on a similar mining container to this uh but it's not the m300 it's the s300 it's a revised version of the m300 as well as an immersion mining container which is basically this but they're going to utilize uh you know immersion tanks it's going to be liquid cooling in there as opposed to air cooled as you see here overall getting up
and running with this thing wasn't too bad with the way I had to rig this up on single phase uh digital shovel had no documentation so I had to work through that with my electrician thankfully I have a good problem solving electrician that I work with uh so he we were able to uh you know work through this um and we did call Scott who is again the owner of digital shovel and ask him some questions so it was cool that you know he did take the time to take our call and help us work
through this but he also wanted to review so that's kind of expected I mean he even came down when it was delivered which was a cool and fun experience we were actually hanging out right around there at one point it was freezing that day too gosh it's really been an interesting experience mining with the digital shovel there's some really cool touches like I mean they stamped their logo into the intake hoods like just from like a product manufacturing point of view like those little touches are cool it's fun it's kind of Premium I mean they
have their designs that are not always just uh for looks but some of the things they do actually add to the structural Integrity of this basically small metal building I have had a bumpy road but I've been able to troubleshoot and work through these things and I do have to reiterate that I had a beta product and I thought that it was a beta product coming to release but they switched gears and chose to go another Direction so some of these problems I have are unique problems that may have never happened with their normal 415
3-phase version or their new production version or there would have been easier and quicker Solutions overall I'm happy in the end I've got this thing running I've got miners deployed in there and uh I mean that's what it's here for that's all I can ask and uh you know I mean it it it is cool it's fun it's exciting so to answer the question like is it worth it right I mean I'd say yeah if you don't want to DIY it diying something is an incredibly fun experience if you get into it if diying it
is a huge chore and you can afford and you have the budget to buy something that's more along the lines of plug andplay then that may be a better option for you depending on how big you are your mining operation You're Building or considering building things like that I mean it it's just a sliding skill how much can you realistically do or if you start subbing out and hiring out you know you're going to pay more and more and more for that DIY that that DIY is really just going to be custom contracted you'll be
surprised how quickly that adds up so as always it's just going to be your decision you're going to have to run the numbers look at your personal scenario and as always do what you want to do I do think their new nanopod that can run on single phase or three-phase electricity and is a 200 amp configuration and uh digital shovel has said they're going to offer a DIY package of it it's going to be shipped in pieces and then assembled on site will create a much lower price point than what these cost so that I
think will hit a much wider Market on the smaller scale side of mining this sizing is actually exactly along the lines of what I was looking for uh the smaller one is is interesting it's useful I want to deploy one of those if for nothing else than science and the fact that I'm for some crazy reason addicted to infrastructure maybe it was too much Monopoly and and Legos and and Sim City when I was a kid but I freaking love buildings and and and it's just fun you know somebody made a funny comment the other
day like what the hell is this animal cross and every time I turn around there's just new house popping up over [Music] there but in all seriousness to bring it back to the shovel I've had a good experience with the Pod through had bit some issues I've been fortunate to be able to to work through all of this things and I cannot be mad about having some issues that I've since solved uh you know as I've eclipsed the 6-month mark this has been a good experience overall I've got miners hashing away I mean what more
can you ask for I hope at this point you know it just continues to run well as I already mentioned my next focus is going to be wire manage then I need to make sure I get this thing nice and cleaned up cuz it just gets kind of gross over time a lot of junk does get through the filters especially pollen unfortunately uh that's just kind of the way it goes uh there's a lot of air being moved all the time in there and then I also want to go ahead and grab some sheet metal
and Fab up some blockers and block all the areas where I don't have miners which will then Force air flow to go exactly through the miners I'm running right now I'm wasting a lot of cool air that's just going all around in there instead of pushing it directly through the mining rigs I'm running targeted air flow means I could run less fans for the same performance and uh they'll just simply get more air they'll run cooler and the cooler your miners are running the longer they will last the higher their hash rate will be and
the lower their power consumption will be it's Pros across the board unless it's like absolutely freezing but in Virginia it's not really a problem I have too often looking at this and trying to think of anything I possibly missed I mean uh when we had the install you know this comes on a 18wheeler you need a forklift off on site you know so that was an expensive rental uh you know over $1,000 to get one over here and uh I need that and we insert the forks we take it off we put it down uh
and so you need that for the installation that's a bit of a hurdle on the door if you notice that piece at the that little silver piece at the top that is a magnet uh so that's a magnetic lock door as well as a physical lock door so the keypads uh uh drops the magnet and then the key you know removes basically the the locking mechanism and uh there's security system on there uh so you can use the security system if you'd like I already have an on-site security system but that's great if you don't
have anything and there's a nice touch on the inside where they have these light bars that run across and they provide great Lighting in there to allow you to do anything you need to do as far as you know setting up miners wire management cleaning whatever uh I would like a switch on them uh but they don't have a switch so I just let them run forever because they're LEDs and it's not that much power and they'll last a long time so that's all I got if you have any questions anything you're wondering about or
you feel like I missed in this video uh please comment down on the comment section below here on YouTube again please check out the article and share the video and the article if you like this at all or if you want to uh you know think a buddy could use this or maybe get into mining or you guys just want to make fun of me like I'm that crazy guy on YouTube whatever I don't care okay you think I've been doing this for years and some hater could stop me a lot of people want to
talk crap why don't you get in the trenches and do something that's where I live in the trenches so on that note I'm going to go ahead and pull myself out the trenches go check on my beautiful puppy it's tail she recently celebrated her eighth birthday I'm going to say that for a couple weeks uh but I absolutely love that pup and it's crazy she just turned eight uh I'm so thankful for every year I get with her and I'm thankful if you're still watching this video thanks for tuning in hope you enjoyed it again
comment please comment questions you have that I missed cuz I tried to be all-encompassing in this 6-month review but I think maybe the only thing else I didn't talk about are the actual miners I'm running in there but I don't think that's all that important uh for this review and I've talked about that in other videos I mean the bottom line is like 22 of current generation miners you can just consider them you know 22 Bitcoin miners s9s you know there's a bunch of different models in there that mine some other coins as well like
an L7 mining Dogecoin and so forth uh but yeah that's all I got and I hope to see you on the next video [Music] ah [Music] w
